The States Did Not Wait For Washington. Three Attorneys General, Three Different Legal Tools.

The federal 7-hydroxymitragynine story has a waiting-room quality to it. A notice of intent published July 6. A statutory minimum that elapsed August 5. An order that can issue on any day and, as of this publication's most recent verified check, still has not. A comment docket closing September 10. Everyone in the trade is watching one page of the Federal Register.

Meanwhile, three state attorneys general have already acted — and not one of them needed the federal order to do it. They did not use the same tool as each other, either. Understanding which tool is which matters more to an operator than the date the DEA finally publishes, because the three reach different conduct, carry different consequences, and are measured against different numbers.

Texas: Suing Sellers Under Consumer-Protection Law

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed suit against kratom retailers, alleging deceptive marketing and sale of products whose 7-OH content vastly exceeded what state law permits. One action targets a retailer operating as Smokey's Paradise, with a location in Midlothian; another targets two California-based online sellers shipping into Texas.

The state's petitions allege that laboratory testing found 7-OH at 86 to 96 percent of total alkaloid content in products sold to Texas consumers. Texas law caps that figure at 2 percent under its Kratom Consumer Health and Safety Protection Act. The attorney general's office has characterized the gap as nearly fifty times the legal limit; the arithmetic is consistent with the figures in its own filings.

The causes of action are worth noting, because they are not drug charges. The suits are brought under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, the state's Kratom Consumer Health and Safety Protection Act, and the Business Organizations Code. These are commercial statutes. They reach how a product was described and sold.

These are allegations in filed civil actions. No court has ruled on them, and this publication has seen no response from the named defendants.

Two Yardsticks That Do Not Convert

The Texas cases expose something that has caused real confusion, and it is worth stating carefully.

The pending federal proposal would reach botanical material containing more than 0.050 percent 7-OH on a dry weight basis, or processed articles containing more than 1.00 milligram of 7-OH. Texas caps 7-OH at 2 percent of total alkaloid content.

Those are not the same measurement, and one does not translate into the other. Dry weight measures a compound against the whole mass of the material. Alkaloid fraction measures it against the other alkaloids present. A product's number under one standard tells you very little about its number under the other, and the two thresholds were written by different bodies for different purposes. Anyone reading a certificate of analysis and trying to reason about legal exposure needs to know which denominator the number on the page is using.

It also means the common shorthand — that Texas is “stricter” or “looser” than the federal proposal — is not a comparison that can be made honestly without doing the underlying arithmetic on a specific product.

Missouri: Working The Supply Chain

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has taken a different route through similar territory. Her office's kratom investigation has expanded beyond retailers to manufacturers and distributors — an attempt to reach the product's supply chain rather than only its point of sale.

The vehicle is the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, the state's general consumer-protection statute. In a filed action against Relax Relief Rejuvenate Trading LLC, doing business as EDP Kratom, the state alleges the company failed to adequately disclose active ingredients in its products, and asks the court to declare violations of that act and to impose penalties reported at $1,000 per violation.

Again: a disclosure and labeling theory, not a controlled-substances theory. The state is not arguing the product is contraband. It is arguing the customer was not told what was in it.

Florida: The Attorney General Scheduled It Himself

Florida is the outlier, and the most consequential for how this cycle may go.

Attorney General James Uthmeier used emergency rulemaking authority to place concentrated 7-OH and related compounds into Schedule I under Florida law, with the effect of making the sale, possession and distribution of isolated or concentrated 7-OH unlawful in the state. The office subsequently expanded the measure to reach compounds being used to blend or substitute for 7-OH derivatives — the same successor-molecule problem the federal analogs order addressed in August, handled at state level and earlier.

That is not consumer-protection litigation. It is scheduling, done by a state officer, without waiting for the DEA.

It is also being contested. An administrative challenge argues the emergency rule was issued without public notice or hearings, and that it criminalized a naturally occurring alkaloid by rule rather than by legislation. The attorney general has asked an administrative law judge to dismiss that challenge. This publication takes no position on the merits, which are for the tribunal, and notes only that the procedural question — how much process an emergency scheduling rule requires — is genuinely open and will matter beyond Florida if other states follow the same route.

The American Kratom Association publicly praised the Florida action. That is an advocacy organization's position on a contested rule, reported here as such and not adopted.

What Three Tools Mean In Practice

Set side by side, the three states are not doing one thing at three speeds. They are doing three different things.

Texas and Missouri are suing companies over how products were sold and described, under statutes that already existed and that require no scheduling action by anyone. Those cases turn on labeling, testing and disclosure. Florida has changed what is lawful to possess within its borders, by rule, and is now defending the manner in which it did so.

The practical consequence is that the federal threshold, whenever it issues, will not be the only line an operator has to clear — and in some states it will not be the operative one at all. A product comfortably under 0.050 percent by dry weight is not thereby compliant in Texas, whose cap is written against a different denominator, or lawful in Florida, whose rule addresses concentration and isolation rather than a percentage.

It also means the waiting-room framing is somewhat misleading. The enforcement environment did not pause pending the DEA. Three attorneys general moved without it, using authorities that were on the books the entire time.

What This Report Does Not Establish

Every matter described here is pending. The Texas and Missouri suits are allegations that no court has adjudicated. The Florida rule is in force but under challenge. This publication has not independently tested any product, has not reviewed the underlying laboratory reports, and reports the testing figures as they appear in the states' own filings and announcements.

Nor does anything here characterize what 7-OH does. The states' descriptions of the compound are their own and are not adopted by this publication.